New jobs fan rising economic optimism-- more good economic news

A hint of good news on one of the biggest question marks hanging over the economy — jobs — added to Wall Street's growing confidence Wednesday that the recovery is firmly on track.
The Dow Jones industrial average notched its third consecutive close above 11,000, rising 104 points to 11,123 as stocks climbed further into territory last seen before the financial crisis.

link: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2010-04-15-1Ahiring15_ST_N.htm

To ensure that your encouraging reports are met with the positive acceptance you would like why don't you have unemployed members of Democratic Underground send you their resumes so you can find them work.

While things are looking a bit better, we're still on very shaky ground, especially with the looming probability of a commercial real estate crash later this year.

Meanwhile we need jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs.

So I will speak in the affirmative and be positive.

When everybody who wants a job has one then we will applaud this economy.

When Americans don't have to face the duel demons of repossession and foreclosure we will applaud this economy.

But all of this rah-rah over three months of numbers slightly better than positive is getting tiresome. Especially for those out of work and not able to find any. Personally I'm looking around at my economic landscape and finding a very depressing scene. I spent the last four years becoming a teacher, because gee, they always have jobs for teachers, only to find that education is taking a huge hit, one that is only exacerbated by Obama's education policy.

Politics is personal, and with little prospect of getting a job, many people like myself only see darkness on the horizon. When somebody comes along all perky and shit, extolling very modest gains as though all was well, well it becomes more than a bit annoying.

So I feel you. Teaching used to be a steady profession but now most school districts can do is maintain the teachers they already have.

What can you do?


It is so depressing.

I can go back to the job I was working before I decided to become a teacher. But frankly going backwards like that is almost too depressing to contemplate. I could also go ahead and get my masters, and get a job as a TA to pay for my tuition and get a bit of a stipend.

Other than that:shrug: I live in the Midwest, and it looks like, as in previous recessions in my life, this one is going to hang on here longer than anywhere else. We'll recover just in time for the next one to hit.

And he's one of the brightest people I have ever met. Thankfully he other skill so he works as a lifeguard and gives swimming lessons.

I haven't seen him/her post anything but "good economic news", it's damn painful for the great many of us that are suffering economically to keep reading that everything is is just hunky dory.

The only thing that trickles down is the piss and the powers that be don't even extend the courtesy of calling it rain any more.

right now but the rebuilding has to start somewhere and nothing better than to build hope and a positive outlook when good things come along. Sure, not enough jobs yet but does anyone really think all the jobs will come back at once. No, they come back like this, Wall Street, like it or not, has to do good and have a good feeling about things and the rest comes along. A chain reaction with everything connecting together. Obama really did inherit a mess and has been coping with this since he took office. He has had to do more major things than probably any President for some time. I think he is holding up pretty dam good considering the flack he has been getting from the right, the left, basically all over.

A rising equities and bond market is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a healthy economy. You can not have a healthy economy when nearly one in five Americans are unemployed, underemployed, or too discouraged to look. Even the CBO says unemployments will be greater than eight percent in 012 and in my state of Florida economists predict that unemployment will hover over ten percent until 2013. I am concerned about the prospects for all Democratic officeholders in this environment. Telling folks things are good when they aren't doesn't work for Republicants and it doesn't and won't work for us.

admitting the unemployment is a problem and admit they are working to try and make things better. Also, saw in your state florida that a dem won his congressional congressman seat in a special election. Don't remember what district or his name.

I think if the dems can keep themselves honest and get the word out in an effective manner such as doing better than they did on health care with the republicans just trying to block everything, they will lose seats in 2010 but hold on to enough to keep their majorities in the house and senate.

This is DU, where the sky is always falling.

Towards those who got clobbered by a big chunk of the firmament..

At 60, I have had no luck finding any kind of job, even after sending out dozens of resumes. My retirement account is running down fast, and I'm not even retirement age yet. Why would you assume I have not suffered simply because I am sick of the suffocating negativity here on DU?

Thanks for your interest.

I feel you. If I was jobless that long I would be homeless or most likely living with a friend.

But even in a good month the proceeds don't even pay the mortgage. I also do freelance technical editing, but again it's penny ante stuff. If it weren't for the blessing of a substantial 401K-type account, I would have been toast years ago.

I'm sixty also, dead broke and depending on my daughter and son in law for a place to live, I lost my house, my savings and my thirty five year marriage, although on the bright side I did manage to get food stamps.

DU was a place of refuge for me during the Bush years but I'm finding less and less comfort here now that a Democrat is POTUS, so many DUers are utterly determined to put a happy face on every damn thing that it's getting increasingly frustrating to read here.

If Bush were still POTUS the attitude here would be completely different under identical economic circumstances, that's what I object to.

Edited to add a phrase.

If you look up thread my circumstaces are dire too.

It's of cold comfort to you, me , and others but I can't imagine a crappier hand than the hand Obama was dealt. And the sad thing is him and the Dems are going to get the blame.

I certainly wouldn't minimize that. But regarding DU, you see a lot of unwarranted optimism where I see a lot of unwarranted pessimism. I suspect we're both right!

If they had indeed created 2.2 million+ jobs, the unemployment rate would not be steady at 9.x(+)%

Here are links documenting the current jobless rate.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4343382&mesg_id=4343411

You're using the U3 number, which excludes a lot of people, like discouraged workers who've given up trying to find a job. When you use the much more accurate U6 number, our unemployment rate is still up around 17.5%.

I was using the "official" figure. I agree the the real figure is much higher. Please note the use of (+) to indicate this. :)

The Reagan recesssion was an "artifically" induced recession that was induced by artificially high interest rates to wring the inflation out of the system. Once the rates were lowered there was a lot of pent up demand. Where's the pent up demand now? Too many folks are broke or near broke and they ain't buying shit.

Oh, and black leather instead of the parchment like I really wanted :(


























:sarcasm:

it's great.

But of course all they have done is set up the same scam again in order to make things appear better in the short term. You know this is true (or if you don't, you should!)

Rising interest rates + total abandonment of the rule of law in finance = a new, possibly bigger disaster brewing.

... are up over 30% year over year.

Great recovery.

Are a leading or lagging indicator of economic trends and why?

Since the home is the primary investment of a great many Americans once they lose that home it is a slide into the economic abyss.

Since that's the idea here - that increases in consumer spending, hours worked, factory orders, etc are not really harbingers of general improvement because foreclosures are also up. This would only be true if foreclosures were a leading indicator, instead of a sign that said foreclosed individuals have been in economic trouble for a long time already; by definition a lagging indicator.

... a 1% retracement of what was lost is not a "trend". And if you think it is you are in for a big surprise.

The initial spate of foreclosures in early to mid 2008 was a big part of what triggered our economic meltdown. Now two years later there is another wave of foreclosers that have resulted from the long term economic crisis.

what JP Morgan and the other criminal leaches on wall street have been up to.

Looting Main Street
How the nation's biggest banks are ripping off American cities with the same predatory deals that brought down Greece


"...Birmingham became the poster child for a new kind of giant-scale financial fraud, one that would threaten the financial stability not only of cities and counties all across America, but even those of entire countries like Greece. While for many Americans the financial crisis remains an abstraction, a confusing mess of complex transactions that took place on a cloud high above Manhattan sometime in the mid-2000s, in Jefferson County you can actually see the rank criminality of the crisis economy with your own eyes; the monster sticks his head all the way out of the water. Here you can see a trail that leads directly from a billion-dollar predatory swap deal cooked up at the highest levels of America's biggest banks, across a vast fruited plain of bribes and felonies — "the price of doing business," as one JP Morgan banker says on tape — all the way down to Lisa Pack's sewer bill and the mass layoffs in Birmingham.

Once you follow that trail and understand what took place in Jefferson County, there's really no room left for illusions. We live in a gangster state, and our days of laughing at other countries are over. It's our turn to get laughed at. In Birmingham, lots of people have gone to jail for the crime: More than 20 local officials and businessmen have been convicted of corruption in federal court. Last October, right around the time that Lisa Pack went back to work at reduced hours, Birmingham's mayor was convicted of fraud and money-laundering for taking bribes funneled to him by Wall Street bankers — everything from Rolex watches to Ferragamo suits to cash. But those who greenlighted the bribes and profited most from the scam remain largely untouched. "It never gets back to JP Morgan," says Pack."

snip

"The city of Birmingham was founded in 1871, at the dawn of the Southern industrial boom, for the express purpose of attracting Northern capital — it was even named after a famous British steel town to burnish its entrepreneurial cred. There's a gruesome irony in it now lying sacked and looted by financial vandals from the North. The destruction of Jefferson County reveals the basic battle plan of these modern barbarians, the way that banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have systematically set out to pillage towns and cities from Pittsburgh to Athens. These guys aren't number-crunching whizzes making smart investments; what they do is find suckers in some municipal-finance department, corner them in complex lose-lose deals and flay them alive. In a complete subversion of free-market principles, they take no risk, score deals based on political influence rather than competition, keep consumers in the dark — and walk away with big money. "It's not high finance," says Taylor, the former bond regulator. "It's low finance." And even if the regulators manage to catch up with them billions of dollars later, the banks just pay a small fine and move on to the next scam. This isn't capitalism. It's nomadic thievery."


cont...
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/32906678/looting_main_street

Who knows how many people in this country and around the world have been thrown out of work, lost good jobs, and into destitution by this one wall street giant. Rah rah propaganda and the whitewashing of the criminal cesspool called wall street isn't going to work this time. They just threw 8.5 million people out of work and they are rallying. Nothing has been done about the massive crimes that caused this collapse but the criminals are celebrating once again so brighter days are coming?

They are destroying communities, towns and counties across this country, jobs and lives are being ruined to fuel this criminal upswing of the dow. And you want people to celebrate, look on the bright side and bow to the almightiness of free as a bird wall street criminals who are continuing on with business as usual as if they've done and are doing nothing wrong.

Wall street is all about the rape pillage and plunder of the working class. The damage caused by their crimes is so massive this time the gatekeepers in the perpetually comfortable upper middle class charged with whitewashing wall street crimes are going to have a hard time selling this particular "good times are coming" package of shit to those of us on the receiving end of the crimes.

"The damage caused by their crimes is so massive this time the gatekeepers in the perpetually comfortable upper middle class charged with whitewashing wall street crimes are going to have a hard time selling this particular "good times are coming" package of shit to those of us on the receiving end of the crimes."

My sentiments exactly and it is highly frustrating to read "the good times are coming" hyperbole here on DU..

Clearly things are better than they were a year ago but we have a long way to go. Even many of the naysayers are starting to come around admitting the stimulus and bailouts worked. It may just be 'kicking the can down the road".. but I think kicking the can down the road was the right thing to do since it stopped the worst case scenario from happening and allowed our economy time to begin to heal itself. There are big hurdles to come but now we have a fighting chance to overcome them.